ARTICLES ABOUT ARENA ROCK BY DATE - PAGE 3

`Arena rock" was a description born in the '80s to describe bands such as Bon Jovi who wrote simplistic anthems designed to be enjoyed by lighter-waving legions in cavernous hockey rinks. On its third album, "Be Here Now" (Epic), due in stores Tuesday, Oasis ups the ante. This 11-song album is a 72-minute beast designed to be blasted over massive public address systems from Wembley to Soldier Field. Arena rock? "Be Here Now" can be fully appreciated only in a stadium, with tens of thousands of inebriated worshipers singing along.

Even as Melissa Etheridge swings a hot little four-piece band through town Saturday at the Rosemont Horizon, she could be forgiven for thinking ahead a bit. On Jan. 25, Etheridge and her longtime companion, Julie Cypher, expect to become first-time parents with the arrival of the baby Cypher has been carrying. Soon after, Etheridge will begin filming the Janis Joplin story in which she will star as and perform the music of the late Texas blues-rock great. "I discovered her intensity and passion when I was 17 or 18," says the 35-year-old Etheridge of Joplin.

It was homecoming weekend for the Smashing Pumpkins, and while the show on the stage at the Rosemont Horizon was full of fierce beauty, the show in the seats was nearly as good. Once a band reaches the point in its career where it can fill a basketball arena three times over--as the Pumpkins did Friday through Sunday--it's no longer just about the music. The Chicago band isn't much for lasers, dry ice or theatrics--though the film festival that whirled on three screens behind the band had its moments of both psychedelic grandeur and comic relief.

`I think I'm about ready for a change," REO Speedwagon leader Kevin Cronin said at the New World Music Theatre Thursday night. Fine. Change your job. Please. Of course, such a change is unlikely. As long as REO can draw crowds by packaging itself with other classic rock acts, the band no doubt will continue its summertime "Can't Stop Rockin' " tours. Now in its second year, the tour this time also brought Foreigner and Peter Frampton along for a ride on the gravy train. Or is it the gravy Speedwagon?

Guided By Voices Under the Bushes Under the Stars (Matador) (star) (star) (star) (star) By now, those clued in to the GBV aesthetic know what to expect: A couple dozen laconic melodies packed into a low-fi blender of prog rock, punk, psychedelia and '60s Brit-Invasion pop. At first listen, "Under the Bushes Under the Stars" sounds like just another tuneful blast from this Dayton band's raft of basement tapes. But upon closer inspection, a subtle progression up the stairs into the light of modern-day production has taken place.

For the most part, arena rock has been missing in action since the success of Nirvana's "Nevermind" altered the music landscape four years ago. The reduced presence of this once-dominant genre has left a void for the perennial fans of blunt, driving guitar rock and melodramatic balladry. It's these lingering desires that Collective Soul tapped during its sold-out performance at The Vic Saturday evening, even as the Stockbridge, Ga., quintet observed the prevailing conventions of today's alternative rock.

Urge Overkill once trafficked in smirks and sarcasm, with matching suits, shades and swinging "U.O." medallions far tackier than anything Dean Martin or Sammy Davis Jr. could have conceived at the height of their Vegas-era fame. Gradually, however, Urge learned how to write tight pop songs with saw-toothed riffs, arching choruses and a catch phrase or three beyond the assembly-line cliches that dominate the Top 40. It was these songs, and a bit of the old shtick, that the Chicago trio brought to the Riviera on Friday.

Superchunk Incidental Music 1991-95 (Merge) (star) (star) (star) 1/2 Portastatic Slow Note from a Sinking Ship (Merge) (star) (star) (star) North Carolina's Superchunk has a wonderful case of commitment phobia. They borrow from punk's sonic roar but refuse to stay true to its nihilistic tendencies. They dig the exuberance of power pop but can't avoid the temptation to subvert it. They love bottom-heavy '70s arena rock but are far too energetic to qualify as disciples.

In its fourth year, Lollapalooza-which arrives Friday and Saturday at the World in Tinley Park-finds itself once again wrestling with an inherent contradiction: how to remain "alternative" while presenting music in a huge, outdoor setting more suited to arena rock. If there's been a disappointment about past Lollapaloozas, it's how so many of the bands treat their performance as just another gig-presenting songs from their most current albums in fairly predictable fashion. Arguably, that's what a good many fans come to see, but organizer Perry Farrell, the former lead singer of 1991 headliner Jane's Addiction and now with Porno for Pyros, has stated that he wanted the festival to be something more, to challenge the audience as much as cater to it. There have been exceptions: At the height of the anti-Ice-T campaign waged by police groups and conservatives in the summer of 1992 over the song "Cop Killer," Soundgarden whipped up a timely version of the song and drove home a point about how artistic repression affects us all. For the most part, however, Lollapalooza has been more a moneymaker than a rule-breaker.

Bruce Springsteen's first-ever televised concert performance, to be broadcast at 8 p.m. Wednesday on the MTV cable network, is worth checking out. But, first, a few caveats. Even a guy like "Saturday Night Live" producer Lorne Michaels, with a vested interest in presenting music on television, acknowledges that rock bands often don`t sound or look very good on the tube. That's because the small screen tends to diminish the larger-than-life image cultivated by most rock acts, and the sound, even in this age of stereo television and radio simulcasts, is invariably tinny and narrow.